


When in the Depth of Winter

by fluffernutter8



Category: Agent Carter (TV), Captain America (Movies)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, F/M, Married Life, Winter, gentle angst
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-17
Updated: 2021-01-17
Packaged: 2021-03-15 14:34:11
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,639
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28814982
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/fluffernutter8/pseuds/fluffernutter8
Summary: Peggy notices how the cold troubles Steve and tries to fix it.
Relationships: Peggy Carter/Steve Rogers
Comments: 16
Kudos: 61





	When in the Depth of Winter

Something happens to Steve as the temperature begins to drop below freezing. Peggy doesn’t think that anyone else has noticed - when asked if he seems different to her, Angie declares, “Nah, swell - and gorgeous! - as always,” and Bucky points out that just because the current war is a cold one, doesn’t mean that Steve feels he’s through with his responsibilities - but it’s terribly obvious to her. Or perhaps it’s only that no one else is around to see him walk through the house in his warmest socks or take an extra quilt from the linen closet to add to their bed. No one else thinks to notice how odd it is for him to bundle in gloves and a scarf and a hat, even though his core temperature stays consistently high regardless. She seems to be the only one who sees him turn from cheery window displays and tuck himself even quieter and farther inside at the parties they’re invited to.

She asks him about it, of course she does. They’ve been married for a year and had been seeing each other nearly daily for months before then, ever since he’d been recovered from the Valkyrie. There’s no one she trusts as much as she does Steve and she doesn’t think it flattery but mere fact that she holds similar esteem to him. Still, he only frowns and shrugs in response to her questions, says he’s feeling the same as usual, kissing her gently on the temple or crown or mouth and thanking her for worrying about him. And she doesn’t think he’s intentionally lying; sometimes, however, your feelings are buried so deeply that you don’t even recognize them. That doesn’t mean that they aren’t there. That doesn’t mean that there isn’t anything to be done.

* * *

Somehow, as if knowing that Peggy has other things to think about and can’t stay in the office until all hours or pop in for emergency sessions on weekends (or perhaps because she isn’t the only one whose family has her focus just now), her agents are closing cases at a top clip and the criminal underworld seems to have settled into some sort of hibernation.

And so Peggy is able to stop at the delicatessen on a Friday and still be home by suppertime.

“It’s the absolute perfect evening,” she says as soon as she comes through the door. “Come for a walk with me.” There’s an excitement to the declaration rather than any martial strictness; after an assessing look at her - this isn’t precisely normal for the two of them - he stands and dons his coat to join her outside.

They live away from the main street and most of their neighbors are already tucked away inside their homes. When they do encounter someone, they exchange nods, but for the most part there is only the soft sound of their boots atop the leftover snow, their exhalations of breath which fog in the air.

Through the larger front windows they can see families eating and couples reading side by side, silhouettes of Christmas trees, and once, a couple sharing a kiss in a dim sitting room. One or the other of them will point out some particularly pretty decorations. It is not late but the winter darkness is so complete that when they step through a streetlight the reality of the brightness is nearly a surprise, a brief dawning which reminds them of how lovely the velvet night can be too.

Pressed close as they are, she feels him shiver as a breeze blows past them. Leaning up, she touches her chilled cheek to his warmer one, both their eyes closed. And without speaking, they turn around and start for home.

Their fireplace has never been used before now, but they light it tonight, sit in front of its bathing warmth to eat the chicken soup that she had brought home, reheated piping hot. They don’t speak much but it is enough, unhurried and peaceful. She can feel him watching her, trying to figure through her intentions, but in the end he seems simply to accept it, leaning back and allowing himself to be thawed.

* * *

“What do you think of ice skating?” she asks him as they finish washing the breakfast dishes one Saturday morning.

He gives her an odd glance. “Walking but on ice and with knives strapped to your feet?” he tries.

“Well, I’m sure there’s nothing we have to do today which can’t keep until tomorrow, and I’ve bought you a pair of skates which should fit.”

Steve is her husband, and before that he was her friend, and he is above all her partner. She doesn’t often use with him the tone of voice she does for stubborn politicians or agency heads who disagree with her, the one which is simultaneously so firm as not to brook complaint and a bit blithe, as though whatever is being discussed has already been decided in Peggy’s favor and aren’t they silly for having forgotten. By the way his eyebrows furrow even deeper, she knows he recognizes it and he even opens his mouth to say so, but in the end he instead goes to get his coat.

Their house is a ten minute walk from the skating pond - not even that if you’re Steve - but they’re usually too busy to even contemplate availing themselves of it. It’s already midmorning by the time they arrive and the day is perfect, sunny but frigid, so no one has to worry about softening ice. They are far enough into the season, however, that the novelty has worn off and only a few other groups are taking advantage.

Steve has, through mutual effort, become a passable dancer beyond back and forth swaying and turning in circles (not that the style doesn’t have its own charms). That skill doesn’t seem to translate to the ice, however, and he spends their first turns around the pond clutching her hands with the trembling ankles of a newborn deer taking its first steps. But he picks it up more quickly than she had expected, his serum-induced athleticism activating as he continues to practice, and soon his hand in hers has nothing to do with balance or security anymore.

They get competitive, they can’t help it, laughing as they race, taking care to swerve around the others with whom they are sharing the ice. Steve tries a couple of jumps - daring and occasionally reckless as he might be, he’s smart enough not to attempt flips just yet - and even when he falls, he just laughs and shakes himself off as he stands again.

It doesn’t escape Peggy’s eyes as they switch back over into their street shoes that Steve has stuffed his gloves into his pocket, that he drapes his coat over his arm deference to the sweat they’ve worked up. But she doesn’t mention anything, merely takes his hand once again for the walk home.

* * *

They go to watch Angie playing Martha Cratchit in _A Christmas Carol_ the next week, and treat her to supper and hot apple cider afterward. (Steve crinkles his nose but keeps taking baffled sips from his mug, as if a preference for it might sneak up on him if he only keeps trying.) The week after that, it snows again and they spend Sunday in Prospect Park with Bucky so Peggy can experience the site of their youthful sledding exploits.

“Well, we didn’t exactly have a sled then,” Steve points out as they climb Lookout Hill. “But there’s plenty you can do with a garbage can lid or the old instrument trays that the hospital was getting rid of.” It’s the sort of statement which would have Peggy’s mother making faces like she had just sniffed sour milk, but Peggy herself actually smiles at the picture of her husband small enough to curl himself up for a trip down the hill and brash enough to try it.

“Can’t believe you’re forgetting my masterpiece,” Bucky jokes. “Weeks of collecting scrap wood and old nails, borrowing my dad’s hammer to put it all together, and you don’t even mention it.”

Steve shakes his head. “My mother was certain I’d get tetanus just from being near that thing when she saw what you’d made.”

“I think my ears are still ringing from her shouting - and don’t think I’ve forgotten that it was mostly at me.”

“You were the one stupid enough to build it!”

“You’re the one who was stupid enough to ride it.” With a grin, Bucky adds, “I didn’t think anyone could shout louder than my ma, so I guess I learned a lesson in more than woodworking that day.”

“Now I’m even more disappointed that I was never given a chance to meet her,” Peggy says as they reach the top before Bucky can play any further with the word _woodworking_. He had been discovered in Russia by a SHIELD spy and extracted a year before they found Steve; he is quiet about the professional help he has been getting to manage the pain of the things that happened to him during the war and after, but it’s clearly making a difference: his terrible sense of humor is returning in fuller force even than she knew it could. Steve’s hip nudges against hers, and she knows that it is not by accident. She looks up at him and catches his smile.

After a morning of racing down the hill until the crowds arrive, after they’d handed over their sleds to a group of kids without their own and, picking up food on the way, gone back to Bucky’s apartment to eat and talk and laugh together, Peggy and Steve take the train back home. His cheeks are still somewhat rosy when she looks at him, and the remnants of laughter still dance about his mouth. Halfway there, a pair of seats opens up and they sit side by side, leaning into each other a bit, watching absently through the steamed window as the city passes them by.

* * *

“I can tell what you’re doing, you know,” Steve says as they climb the porch stairs, returning from helping out at the Red Cross rummage sale. Steve has plenty of volunteer projects he’s associated with around the neighborhood - the soup kitchen, the community center - but she had been the one to suggest this; she remembers how welcome that bright symbol had been on the battlefield, in the same way as Steve’s shield.

“Unlocking the door?” she asks as she plucks her keys from her bag.

He is so near to her that she can feel his heat and practically his narrowed eyes as well as he says, “Not—Well, sure, but what I _meant_ was that I know that you don’t just suddenly find winter outings appealing.”

She lets them through the door, unbuttoning her coat with her other hand. “Perhaps I’m only just becoming comfortable enough with you to share my love for them.” Until he comes out with what he is thinking, she isn’t going to simply believe the jig to be up.

“Peggy,” he says, and to anyone else listening it would just be her name, but she hears the real sharpness to the word. She turns to him, coat still draped around her shoulders. He’s shut the door with his foot and they haven’t had a chance to switch on the lights; his face is shadowed, difficult to make out in the muted light of the late afternoon.

“When you asked,” he says, and then makes himself take in more air. “When you asked if something was wrong, I didn’t know that there was. But it’s just that—” He ducks his head, then lifts it again, making himself look toward her. “I keep thinking of all those winters of never being quite warm enough, never having a good coat or shoes to keep out the damp, the way I knew that I was getting sick by the way my breath would catch when I laughed or when there was a certain taste in the back of my throat. I can’t forget the smell of trench foot from guys who’d been walking in wet boots for days, or the times I had to be the one to keep digging the graves because the ground was so frozen no one else could get through it. There are nights I close my eyes and see Buck falling, that jacket of his all dark against the snow, even though he survived, he’s back now and safe. And sometimes, when the wind is really bad, I feel like I remember—” He cuts himself off, shaking his head, though his shoulders shake as well, broad as they are.

They have talked about their time apart, as they call it, but he has always wanted to keep the focus on her end, on the things she had done and the way she had felt and all that had happened to her, pushing off talk of his end of things with reminders that there wasn’t anything to tell about what was essentially a prolonged sleep. They both know that he shouldn’t be able to recall any of it - he swears he was knocked out by the impact of the crash and he only woke up again long after he had been removed from the shell of the Valkyrie and completely warmed - but even the thought that he might remember a moment of his time frozen beneath the ice stabs at her. 

“I could see that this time of year was difficult for you,” she says, and she doesn’t look away from him even as she folds herself inward. Typically her bulling forward has worked in her favor; the idea that it might have backfired and hurt the person she least wants to is intolerable. “I thought we might try to cloud some of the associations for you, to give you some new memories for the season. But perhaps it was a bit too much to overcome.”

He ducks his head and steps toward her; he is very near in the darkened front hall. “You weren’t wrong to try. The thing is that you did give me good new memories: helping people get through the worst of the cold, spending time with our friends, all those new moments with you. Those memories have to fit inside my head along with the old ones; you just made sure that sometimes when it’s cold what I’ll remember instead is kissing you with snowflakes on your eyelashes. I’m just never sure which is going to be the one my brain’ll bring up.”

“I know as well as you do that it’s impossible to erase the other memories,” she says. “But it’s terribly important to me to make sure that you have an entire lifetime’s worth of happy ones too.”

“You’ve given me a million wonderful ones, even when you weren’t trying,” he says staunchly. Captain America isn’t just a persona or a symbol, it’s who he is, the bolsterer, strong and entirely reliable, she’s always known that. But it is so clearly Steve Rogers who, after a pausing moment, asks, low and a bit worried, “But what about—I don’t want you to feel guilty if sometimes the good memories aren’t always enough. It’s only that the bad ones are still in there too.”

She closes her eyes; how particularly privileged she feels for him to allow himself to say such a thing when he spends so much time considering himself last, trying to make sure no one thinks of having to extend a hand on his behalf. 

“Well,” she says, stepping forward and tucking herself beneath his coat with him, wrapping arms around his back to hold him tightly to herself. “In those moments, we just stand together and wait for spring.”

**Author's Note:**

> I wrote 4 fics for Steggy Secret Santa this year because I kept being dissatisfied by what I'd written. This was the second fic I came up, but what was supposed to be a sweet little celebration of winter fun insisted on having a more melancholy bent to it, so I'm posting it now.


End file.
